5 Santa Cruz Cafes California Locals Can't Stop Talking About

The buzzing California beach town of Santa Cruz is better known for surfing than coffee culture, but that doesn't mean that you can't find freshly roasted beans, tasty specialty lattes, and unique flavors in the cafes on its sunny streets. The most famous coffee to come out of Santa Cruz is arguably Verve Coffee Roasters, the enormously popular company that was named 2024's Roaster of the Year by Roast Magazine. 

There's no denying that any Verve location in Santa Cruz is worth a visit, but dive a little deeper, and you'll find that there are a lot of other cafes and roasteries that California locals love just as much. After digging through thousands of reviews and replies to public posts looking for coffee recommendations on social media platforms like Reddit, we built a list of coffee shops with a reputation for making delicious drinks.

If you're willing to expand your coffee tour beyond the city itself, hop in the car and drive around Santa Cruz County for even more options. Less than 15 minutes from the heart of Santa Cruz is Soquel, a tiny community with a surprisingly bustling downtown. There, you'll find the friendly neighborhood favorite of Santa Cruz coffee lovers: The Ugly Mug Coffee House. Along with delicious brews, it often hosts live music and serves as an art gallery. Right next door is Capitola, a colorful seaside village with Italian flair that's home to another local favorite: Coffee Conspiracy. This shop was born as a cart on the back of a bicycle, transformed into a pop-up, and then grew into a brick-and-mortar shop offering interesting single-origin coffees. If you want to stay within the city limits on your trip to Santa Cruz, though, never fear. Here are some of the best coffee spots around town.

There may be plenty of coffee shops in Santa Cruz, but there's only one Cat & Cloud. With bubblegum-pink and sky-blue aesthetics, this whimsical local chain began as a Kickstarter campaign and now includes a roastery and four cafes in and around Santa Cruz. Your best bet is probably their headquarters on Swift Street, which serves more food options than any of the others. However, all their shops sell the same coffee, so wherever you go, the flavors will be the same. When we looked over posts asking for recommendations for coffee places on Reddit's r/santacruz subreddit, Cat & Cloud's name came up more than any other.

Coffee aficionados will recognize Chris Baca, one of the shop's three founders, as a fierce competitor in multiple United States Barista Competitions and a frequent face on the specialty coffee side of YouTube, so you know the company is run by people passionate about coffee. However, their stated priority is hospitality, and when you step inside one of their locations, it shows. When you visit one of their pastel shops, expect a relaxed environment and great service. As one coffee lover on r/Coffee commented: "C&C was easily the most welcoming, friendly and rad shop I've ever been to ... I [haven't] had a [coffee] from Cat and Cloud I didn't enjoy."

While the brick-and-mortar stores are the heart of the brand, you can follow along with Cat & Cloud via the company's podcast and Baca's YouTube channel, both of which provide a unique look into their business and Santa Cruz's coffee scene. You can also order a wide range of their blends online, but for the best experience, stop into one of their shops while you're in Santa Cruz.

In conversations about the best tasting coffee in Santa Cruz it doesn't take long for the name 11th Hour Coffee to come up. Its founders emphasize that they care about creating a third place that serves as a welcoming environment for the local community. As one local guide on Google Reviews shared after a visit in 2025: "Coffee shop with delicious and interesting drinks and a really cool atmosphere. The inside feels like you're sitting in a little forest with all the plants and natural light coming through the skylights."

Like a lot of great cafes, 11th Hour Coffee began as a farmers market booth and appeared at pop-up events in Santa Cruz before becoming a storefront coffee shop in 2018. The cafe is a family business, run by Brayden and Joel Estby. The pair truly built their brand from the ground up, gutting and rebuilding everything from their bar to their espresso machine.

Today, 11th Hour Coffee has two locations, both in Santa Cruz, one downtown and one on the Westside. Both serve espresso without too much of an acidic bite in specialty lattes like the honey-and-lavender Honey Bee Latte. The cafe is also known for its matcha latte drinks, including the cheekily named "Flat Green" instead of a flat white and the "Conflicted Hippie," which includes three different types of alternative milk. You can grab quick bites, like a protein bowl, breakfast burrito, or avocado toast, and preorder gluten-free pastries like Cardamom Rose Cake and Earl Grey cookies, too.

If you value quality but other specialty roasters aren't to your taste, try out Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting. Some people go to cafes to spend time with their friends or get some work done in a semi-public space. Others want to quickly stop off and grab a coffee and a pastry before dashing off to their next stop. Others still are seeking out the chance to try fresh roasts and new flavor notes in their brews. Enter Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting. The cafe is known for small-batch specialty roasts served from the company's patented machine, known as the BrewBar, designed to mimic the craft quality of pour-overs. 

The brand's coffee drinkers are dedicated. As one local guide on Google Reviews put it in late 2025: "Still the best coffee in Santa Cruz ... I've been coming here for decades, and even though I have since swapped coasts, every time I come home, I make it a point to stop by."

Although Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting predates mainstream specialty coffee in the United States, they have been roasting up and serving fair trade beans with an emphasis on bringing out flavor notes through the roasting process that lovers of specialty coffee have come to expect since 1978. However, while many third-wave roasters focus on fruity, light-roast coffee, the older Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting is beloved for its darker-roasted blends. If you want the full experience, it's definitely worth stopping by in person to try out their BrewBar for yourself, but a lot of Santa Cruz locals shout out this cafe for their beans for home use, too.

The right cup of coffee can do more than caffeinate you. It can transport you and teach you about another culture from the very first sip. That's exactly what newcomer to the Santa Cruz coffee scene Mariposa Coffee Bar aims to do. This cafe offers a selection of both famously strong Vietnamese and Cuban coffee, along with vegetarian bites inspired by street foods from both cultures, from pasties to noodle bowls. The cafe's co-founders, Chelsea Cabrera and Tram Vu, offer two separate coffee menus, one for Cuban coffee, including a powerful Cafecito and the sweet Bella Bon Bon, and one for Vietnamese coffee, including multiple drinks made with a phin, a stainless steel filter used in traditional Vietnamese coffee-making.

Having opened in 2023, it will likely take some time for Mariposa to gain the reputation of chains like Verve. California locals who have visited the cafe rave about it, and it's easy to see why it has rapidly become a Santa Cruz favorite, chosen for everything from a rainy day study session to wedding day celebrations. The cafe's coffee menu is surprisingly affordable, and its black walls, lush green plants, and original art lend it an energizing but relaxed setting. The music is eclectic and, most importantly, the coffee is delicious. 

There's something special going on at this cafe beyond the drinks and the vibe, though. As one local guide on Google Reviews said: "I went in for a different kind of coffee experience and also got a life lesson of just being yourself ... It's a beautiful coffee shop inside containing a staff that cares about their customers."

"Hidden Fortress has the best coffee in the county, easily," one user on Reddit's r/santacruz subreddit stated. They just might be right. If you're hunting for a truly delicious cup of coffee that you can feel good about drinking, seek out this hidden gem. Many Santa Cruz locals know them from their booths at local farmers markets, where their simple white banner promises "organic tasty beverages" hot from their espresso machine, along with pastries and breakfast options. 

While you can definitely still find them there, they also have a storefront cafe. Since the summer of 2024, Hidden Fortress can be found serving coffee and sandwiches from a window with an aquamarine floral mural within Cruzio Works, a coworking location downtown.

This new favorite has a unique story. Its owner, Amelia Loftus, owned a farm before opening the coffee shop. Loftus' farm is located about 30 minutes south of Santa Cruz, near the coastal agricultural hub known as the Strawberry Capital of the World: Pajaro Valley. There, she has been roasting coffee since 2001. At Hidden Fortress, Loftus honors her farming roots by sourcing the coffee she roasts from women-owned farms. While this coffee spot is new and finding its audience, its founder credits its survival to its dedicated local coffee lovers who choose their business again and again. One of those customers commented on an Instagram post from Hidden Fortress in the spring of 2025, saying: "I bought my first cup of your coffee in [September] 2015 at Pacific Grove Farmer's Market. Still the best coffee ever since, ever."

To find local coffee spots with the most buzz in Santa Cruz, California, we began our search by reading posts on social media platforms like Instagram and Reddit that pertained to recommendations for great coffee. While "cafe" can mean many things, in this case, we focused our search on places known specifically for their coffee, rather than brunch options or baked goods. To ensure that the coffee was worth a stop on your Santa Cruz itinerary, we primarily looked for third-wave and specialty coffee shops, which are more likely to serve high-quality, well-roasted coffee beans (though we made exceptions for the older Santa Cruz staple Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting, because it is known for its roasts. 

From there, we selected the coffee shops that had the most positive mentions across threads. Since we are talking about Santa Cruz, we also chose to highlight shops that either began in Santa Cruz or currently have their main (or only) location in the city, rather than including chains that happen to have locations there.

We also decided to limit our search to coffee shops in the actual city of Santa Cruz, although we did mention two Santa Cruz County shops outside the city limits in the introduction, as we saw them mentioned by Santa Cruz locals several times in conversations about the best coffee in Santa Cruz. This is by no means an exhaustive list. Although we were unable to highlight them on our list, local favorites like the small chain Lulu Carpenter's, Cafe Delmarette, the California staple Alta Organic Coffee Warehouse & Roasting Co., and beloved local hangout spot The Abbey Coffee Lounge are also great spots for coffee enthusiasts looking for a delicious caffeine boost in Santa Cruz.